remembering

(actually incredibly proud of myself for capturing snippets of my most formative four years in such a consistent and tangible manner, such that that i can revisit at whim from hereon, in the years to come) 

nostalgia is a funny phenomenon: there is only the good left, and even the bad times are coloured in a rosy, almost psychedelic hue. i remember how badly i wanted to graduate and be done with formal education, but now that all is done and dusted i cannot remember why i chafed at college life so desperately the way i did. there was a moment when i sat in the elm courtyard past 10pm with qiken catching up on life and he told me something along the lines of my self-inflicted pressure with my overloading modules and what not, and that i should slow down and invest in getting to know the community better etc or i would regret dearly afterwards. for sanity, i had deliberately picked my battles and shut out the white noise with mind over matter as my guiding principle, but somehow some friends got shut out in the process as well. but you know what? i still have no regrets, bc now that everything is passé i only have good memories left. even the bad are obscure memories cast in golden hues, dull flickering lights of a past that has made the present me stronger and of better faith.

what do i miss? i miss the littlest things of life on campus and the campus itself:

taking away lunch treats (double taps for an iced cafe latte, a slice of pipping hot but mediocre-tasting cheese pizza and two mini-sized haagen dazs ice cream tubs) to floor nine room D of saga tower B and tucking myself into bed as i feasted and watched jennim for a short lunch respite before the reality of my 28mc workload hit me like a truck once again

feeling incredibly happy from gaining a small paradigm shift in the way i viewed the world from class, and excitedly texting bae something like "do you know why china's so adamant about claiming the islands in the south china sea? bc according to unclos, claiming the islands means they'll be able to extend their territorial waters 12 nautical miles from there and project their geopolitical influence across asia..." - so eager to share my new knowledge with the person i love

cafe agora with the senior crew - the camaraderie of being able to count on bumping into my favourite people and lament about capstone together: some days i would turn up and see vincent, mars, jon, jieying, annie, and/or milly already there (and the occasional guest appearance from qiken)

chilly night walks across the elm courtyard and around utown post-workout with my airpods playing "pretend" and "love drunk" on repeat - that feeling of a deep-seated quietness in the midst of a whirlwind of things demanding my attention

the rare but treasured supper nights walking out to the al-amaans stretch with vincent - those supper nights that made us wise ("our friendship will really be over if we can't even make one supper night before move-out")

night walks at star vista and rochester park with koi in one hand and bae's hand in the other, just like the way we first met in my sophomore year

and of course, spending our third valentine's day feasting on cheap but good clementi sushi in the comfort of my home away from home - magnum night and the mistake of getting wang wang's hotkid milk beverage (it screamed childhood), or holding bae's hands as he clumsily twirled me around and i tried to jump on his back for a piggyback ride in the utown green field.

time travel - part three

i am so grateful for work but practicality of the marketplace is slowly stripping my ability to feel, to write and to introspect. here's to not losing that facet of me that had loved to feel deeply and write freely:

read part one and part two

part three focuses on the year 2016. i am so lucky to have found someone i cherish so deeply now and for the past two and a half+ years, a man whom i am seriously considering to spend the rest of my life with. most of the time i forget how i was like before i got this lucky. year 2016 was the year i experimented the most with personal growth i.e. growth in different trajectories and the constant pushing of boundaries to see where i would break. and break i did. by the end of the year i was so barren that i called it quits and told jesus i needed to re-pivot back to the one Thing that matters most. it was then that i started to get lucky. but i am who i am today bc of all these collective experiences - heartbreaks, chopping off my long hair for the first time in years for a fresh start, feeling like i wasn't good enough and pent-up anger that spat at the world for making me feel that way when i knew my worth. it was through these experiences that i got to re-validate my self-worth again and again, and do justice to investing in myself.

part three: 

take me somewhere nice - mogwai 


[2016]


wrapped in my college jumper like a dumpling but it still felt like the dead of winter. the sound of fingers gently striking keyboards like the pattering of rain drops, breaking the otherwise oppressive silence of an unusually quiet library past nine. it was a chilly night. a night walk to starbucks and butterflies in my stomach - here it was again, this familiar feeling of a nascent something that eventually turned out to be a false alarm. silly me, but of course i wouldn't have known that. the dull ache of loneliness juxtaposed against the warmth of a boy's company. a takeaway paper cup worth seven bucks nestled in my cupped hands, fingers stretched out and parched of warmth in the chilliness of an enclosed performance hall with the ac turned on to full blast. the windows and doors were frosted from the cold. it was empty, save for us. a safe place to mutually trade stories of how prior things ended. a note of finality - yes i was done and i was proud of myself for moving on
(or so i thought). drunk on exuberance from a vulnerable conversation. a brownie bar for me from the convenience store. finally i'm not an afterthought, but someone worth remembering in the little things. maybe this was it. (it wasn't). silly me.


yes i'm changing - tame impala 


[2016]


"the circle is full and now it's closed". there was so much anger, but the suicide of a cherished member of the community completely threw things into perspective - it made me realise the way we trivalised death and held on to our petty pride at the expense of things we did that we might have regretted at a later stage. a reconciliation followed by an indefinite truce - i was no longer going to be angry, and so we became friends again. there was still alot of comfort in an old friendship that went in a special direction, ended, mended, soured and then got mended again. the lines might have appeared to have blurred again - that celebratory night after four consecutive shots (inebriated but i do remember), but no i'd changed by then - it was zhuangzi-rsque of me to have separated the physical from the emotional. inside i was hollow and felt nothing anymore. yes i'm changing, yes i'm gone. yes i'm older, yes i'm moving on. 


one dance - drake, wizkid, kyla


[2016]


this song was the song to top the charts in the usa when i was alone in new york city. my iphone wallpaper read "twenty is prime" - somewhere in the recesses of my soul i wanted to shout out to the world: LOOK AT ME! A SMALL GIRL IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF. "i feel so alive, so alive so alive!" my heart drumming in my chest as i took the metro from my workplace in franklin avenue, going above the brooklyn bridge back to halsey street back "home". even then i knew i would miss the sun setting in between two mammoth-like buildings, the warmth of a pinkish-orange hue still imprinted in my memory, so vividly.

hi, i'm back

in the time i've been away from this space on the internet that i've carved out for myself, i've:

1. completed my final 28mc semester
2. received my first ever full-time job offer 
3. accepted this job offer after considering what remains most important to me at this stage in my life
4. concurrently completed my capstone thesis that i could never have envisaged as ever being completed 
5. said my goodbyes to ten college avenue west 
6. hit my personal best semester cap despite eight additional mcs 
7. walked the stage and made my parents beam with pride 
8. gone on all three of my planned "grad" trips, my favourite being frolicking in osaka/kyoto with bae
9. watched all the korean dramas i'd staved off for my year-long 28mc semesters 
10. started work for good (screams internally: i'm no longer an intern!!!!) 
11. achieved two industry-recognised company certifications in under a month, with three more to go! and may i never tire of onward learning~

reviving this space bc today's retrospective meeting reminded me of the importance of reflection and introspection. growth has always been my guiding principle - i followed my heart and ended up here: am slowly building up my own community, but most days i've been exiting work with a light heart and tummy hurting from laughing so hard throughout the day. it is no doubt still our honeymoon phase until post-san francisco come mid-august, but i just want to take this moment to savour the now. at the end of the day, what i remember and treasure are still the small wins and little moments of boundless laughter; of being shown kindness and human warmth; of being treated as both valued and valuable. i am so lucky to be here, to be chasing after what makes me feel alive. 

a reminder to self that growth can only follow a concerted effort on my part to insert myself into uncomfortable and inconvenient places/situations. i tend to forget that, especially once i get cosy with a community that has grown on me. i also tend to shun away from difficult situations, particularly if they take a toll on my psyche. but i also know i've never regretted the eventual fruits of exposing myself to discomfort bearing growth. those have been the truest gems of my life.

another reminder to self to carve out time for people i want to keep around for a long time.